After heavy graduation hit, Mounts look to reload

A year ago, coming off a solid 16-10 season the year before with most of the key players from that squad returning, hopes were sky high that Ephrata had a chance to do great things.

However, those hopes seemed to dim over the summer when Coach Charlie Fisher left for Manheim Central, and the Mounts were left to scramble in the 11th hour to find someone to step in and guide this talented squad.

Luckily, they found their man in former Muhlenberg Coach Jon Treese, and it truly was a seamless transition.

After a 4-3 start, the Mounts came together and turned in their best season since the 2004-05 campaign. Ephrata went on to post a 19-8 mark, along the way finishing second in the section (10-4), advancing to the L-L League semifinals and was one win away from heading to the State Tournament.

Transitioning to this year, Treese and company will have some work to do if they want to duplicate last year’s run due to heavy graduation losses.

A total of six seniors moved on, including three-year starting point guard Dilyn Becker, four-year varsity player Sam Cable, and talented swingman Brad DaBella, who provided both scoring and a physical presence at the defensive end.

The good news is Ephrata does bring back two of the top returning players in the league in seniors Xavian Rodriguez and Zach McGillan. A year ago, the ultra-athletic Rodriguez was the Mounts’ leading scorer, averaging 13.3 points per game. McGillan was one of the Mounts’ top perimeter threats, averaging 8.7 points a game while draining 46 three-pointers on the season.

Those two will be leaned on heavily as they are surrounded by a group that doesn’t have a lot of varsity minutes under its belt.

Senior Jared Groff (6-3) and junior Lyle Kopp (6-3) will look to help stabilize the middle while in the back-court, a number of players will hope to make their mark including junior point guard Miles Heckstall, senior Alex Nelson and sophomore Parke Haws.

Ephrata will remain in Section Two in the newly-revamped five-section format, and will be joined by Warwick, Elizabethtown, Conestoga Valley and Lebanon.

The Mounts open the season Friday night at the Exeter Tip-Off tournament. Ephrata will face host Exeter in the second game of the day, beginning at 5 p.m.

Todd Ruth: Looking back on last year’s 19-8 season, one of the best in a long time at Ephrata. What are your thoughts on what you accomplished?

Jon Treese: We had a senior class that was really, really dedicated to making Ephrata basketball a winning program. When I look back on it I think I’m thankful that that group of seniors created a culture that we can sustain in our gym. The level the kids are expected to compete at in practice, and the knowledge of what it takes to win is something that, looking back at last year, I really gained a lot of perspective on. It was great for our community. It was great for our kids to get to experience it. It also kept our kids that are coming back really hungry.

Our seniors that left they said that a lot at the end of the season. “Don’t come up short…don’t come up short.” We all feel like we didn’t reach our potential last year. We had a very good year but we all thought we should have been in the State Tournament. We thought we should have played for the league title. We thought we should have won our first District game and we just came up short in a couple places. But I’m going to miss that group of seniors. To be able to come in late and experience a group like that, your first year at a place, it was really special…a really special group of kids. We had a lot of fun, we grew a lot together.

TR: To come into a situation with seniors like that, how did that ease your transition?

JT: They were experienced, they were confident and they knew that they had a lot of ability. They knew what it was going to take to win, and they were also very receptive to coaching. They wanted more basketball knowledge. They wanted to keep growing as players, so realistically they kind of gave me the keys, and we worked really well together. It’s a blend of things I’ve done for a long time mixed with things they were already doing here and finding out what was going to work best for us. I think you can only have a transition like that if you have a group of seniors that are very coachable and have a lot of ability to handle the physical and the mental aspects of high school basketball.

TR: Coming into this year, obviously you lost a lot of those guys. Six seniors who filled a lot of roles for you. How do you make up for that?

JT: It’s very difficult to replace. I don’t remember the number of starts that group had under their belts over the course of two or three years. And then the guys who didn’t start, some guys who played a lot of minutes and some who played very little, in practice every day the whole group of them were working exceptionally hard to always make us better. No matter what their role was that day in practice they all bought into it. That is the thing that’s really hard to replace. Having a group that really understands their roles, really buys into their roles, and are just much more focused on the “we” and never focused on the “me.” That’s a big thing to replace.

TR: Heading into this season, after two weeks of practice what are your thoughts of this group thus far?

JT: Well, we can still do a lot of the things we did well last year…we can still do those things well. We have a real good understanding of what we want to do defensively. We continue to grow as basketball players in our motion sets. On top of that, we kind of have a new dynamic. We are playing with a little more size than last year. We are mixing in some different lineups, so we have different wrinkles, different looks we can put out there that we didn’t always have last year. One thing after two weeks that we are going to be consistently working on is keeping the absolute level of maximum effort through every drill. That’s going to be a work in progress, just because we got some young guys in our gym. We have a lot of new JV players. We have a lot of guys transitioning to varsity roles. I would say right now we are still feeling out specifically what our roles are going to be. And we are still working out what sort of new things we can do defensively and offensively that give us a really good opportunity to be successful. And I think that’s been the biggest part of our growing process.

I think the competitiveness is going to be there. I think the guys are ready to start playing someone else…they’ve been going at each other pretty hard in practice. Organization-wise, in the off-season we put in a lot of things so we know we are much more ahead of the curve than we were last year even. It’s just a matter of new guys are going to have to go out there when the lights are on and see what it’s really like out in that fire of the first Friday night. And until we have that first weekend…I think we are going to do a lot of growing after this first weekend.

TR: The good news is you have two very nice pieces back in Xavian Rodriguez and Zack McGillan. What are your thoughts on having them back and what their roles will be this year?

JT: Well, every team has to score a number of points to win basketball games so obviously we are relying on “X” and Zack to score. They drive our inside-outside game. They both have been working pretty hard at developing other parts of their game. Zack is getting much better off the dribble and is making a lot of really good reads. “X” is constantly improving his play-making ability, being able to do a lot with the basketball in his hands, then knowing how to score with the basketball out of his hands more and more. They are both trying to grow as individual players. Most importantly with their roles, sharing leadership with our other seniors that for which I have a lot of respect. We have a group of seniors that didn’t get a lot of varsity experience yet they worked exceptionally hard the last two years to have this opportunity this year. We have a nice core group of leadership, and of course Zack and “X” fit into that at the forefront because they have all of that experience of what it’s like out there on the court and what you need to do to win these varsity basketball games. So I think the biggest thing they are taking on is vocal leadership.

TR: Looking at this year’s roster, the one thing that jumps out is all the ballhandling you graduated. How are you guys addressing that?

JT: We have some young guys that have emerged a little bit and people that are ready to take that on. We obviously lost a really good combination of back-court guys that played a lot of minutes. We could do a lot of different things. Dilyn Becker is a heck of a point guard. I don’t know how many better high school point guards I’m going to coach. Sam Cable could play any position we needed him to which included handling the basketball. He was always calm, cool and collected. And Brad (DaBella) was dynamic for us, inside, outside, the ability to shoot, the ability to attack and create space for other people. So now we are kind of shifting those roles. One thing you have to remember about having a group like we did last year is other teams we played, they really didn’t see the ability for other people to handle the basketball. It’s there…it’s more than you realize, because we work on it every day and kids work hard at it. We’ve had people step into that role to be the new point guard, the new floor general, but we can also do other things to handle the basketball. We can look at favorable match-ups. I can put out some match-ups where we might get a bigger kid on a guy with some ball-handling ability and that can kind of help us be able to facilitate offense. I don’t worry about how we are going to handle the basketball because I know how hard the guys work. I think the bigger question mark for us is going to be how do we keep the pressure off our scorers that also have to handle the basketball. But that’s something I think we’ll flush out in these first few games.

TR: Who are the other guys that are going to play some bigger roles this year?

JT: Alex Nelson is coming back as a senior. He’s going to play a very big role in the backcourt. We have a sophomore who really emerged in the off-season in Parke Haws. He had a breakout summer so I’m looking for him to be one of the guys..he had a really good spring and summer. And then we have Jared Groff, who sometimes stepped in and played big time varsity minutes. He was with these guys last year, played in some important games and got a lot of experience in the off-season. He’s really anchoring our defense. He’s really doing a lot of good things for us within the offense. I look for him to have a really good senior year. Going down the line we have Lyle Kopp who is a junior. He had two strong JV years and is up with the varsity full-time now. He kind of can do a lot of different things for us. He shoots the ball, he’s working on developing his ball-handling skills, gives us good length…he can guard bigger bodies. This year should be the emergence of Miles Heckstall in the backcourt. He had a very good work ethic all off-season and played a lot of basketball games between AAU and the summertime and open gyms…he logged a lot of hours.

That I think is the core of our rotation, and then we have a couple other guys who we are looking to make big steps forward. Alex Perez is right there trying to be another man to play inside. He helps us rebound and defend. And then we have other guards who could emerge. I will say right now Blake (Billingsley) has taken a huge step forward as a junior. He’s sort of been leading the JV team which makes him step into the varsity role when we need him. Right now that’s where we are at. And that might change a half a dozen times in the next week but right now I’m excited about what this group of eight, nine 10 guys can do.

TR: What do you think are your greatest strengths as a team?

JT: I think we are still going to be a very good defensive team. I really think defense has to remain our strength. We work on it every day, we pay a lot of attention to details on defense. We make a lot of our practice geared to be competitive on the defensive end. That has to be our strength if we are going to be successful moving forward. Our transition game is constantly improving. What’s been built here is a very good base knowledge of how to run a half-court motion offense, how to control tempo in multiple ways, and I think last year we did that with defense. And we could run when the situation presented itself. I think we are building more of a transition game but that doesn’t always mean it’s transition to score. It’s transition to put pressure of the defense. We can still shoot the ball. We still have kids who can shoot the ball. We still have arguably one of the best slashers and scorers in the whole league. We have those two strengths and they are not going anywhere for this year. We just got to make sure we use them the right way.

TR: Do you see the overall inexperience as your biggest hurdle?

JT: I would say replacing a lot of experience is like the elephant in the room…everybody knows you are replacing a lot of experience and that’s going to be a difficult thing. But I’m a really big believer in the culture we have right now. I think we can avoid having to rebuild and we can step into a reload process.

TR: The league has re-aligned from three sections to five. Do you like the new set up?

JT: I’ll say in terms of competitiveness, I think our section is going to be extremely competitive. It’s going to be exciting every night. There were no nights off in Section Two last year, and it’s probably going to be even more of that this year because teams are even better than they were last year…it’s going to be exciting. From a program standpoint of where you want to be, every program wants to get to a point where you are competing for a District title and you are making noise in the State Tournament. That’s where we all want to get to. Without being forced to play some of those high-level 6A schools, we are going to play two teams this year that went to the State Tournament 6A last year. And they are bringing back some good pieces. When you are getting experience like that during the season, you have to think if you go through it maybe you are more equipped for that District run. That’s how I look at it. We are fortunate to be able to experience some very challenging basketball games to prepare for the post season.

TR: There are no nights off in the section, that’s for sure.

JT: No. It’s going to be tough. Warwick is going to be good. I think they’ve turned the corner. I thought they were going to start to turn the corner last year. Their Coach Chris Christensen does great things. His athletes are out for the team. They always had good numbers out for the summer. They have some really good things going. You can tell that he’s got a lot of good things in place, and they are going to be tough. Lebanon is going to be good. They work hard and always play hard. I think they are going to be able to do some different things and still be good at what they’ve been good at traditionally. E-town is bringing back a really good lineup. They scored a ton of points on everybody last year, including us. And I know CV lost a couple key pieces but athletically they are going to be as athletic or more athletic than anybody in the section. I think that names everybody except us, and we are going to just see where we fit into all of it.

TR: Which of those teams do you see as possibly the pre-season favorite?

JT: I truthfully think Warwick is set up to be very successful this year, so they scare me. I know Lebanon is very close to being very good, so they scare me. And I know E-town averaged like 67 points a game for a stretch last year…they put 70 on people. Those three teams are going to be pretty scary.

TR: Well if things fall into place, what do you feel is the potential of your team?

JT: The potential is always the sky is the limit, right? Potentially we could compete to win our section. If we are competitive in our section, we are going to qualify for Districts because if we are competitive in our section means we are competing with the 6A schools we have to play which means we should be in the 5A tournament. I think a lot of our question marks have to be answered. I think some guys really need to keep growing as the season goes on. I think for us this year, potential-wise, last year was so different because of a new coach and a group of guys that really knew what their mission was and what they were doing. The reason we lost a few games early wasn’t because of lack of ambition or talent or effort. It was feeling each other out. Once we looked at each other at 4-3 last year we kind of got on the same page and it was firing on all cylinders.

This year, we might experience more of the same but it’s really going to be because our best players are going to have to grow into their new roles as leaders on the court. They are doing a good job in practice but it’s something they are going to have to grow into on the court. Our young guys have to step into those new roles, and our seniors who are returning with less varsity experience, they have to step into being main guys now, and that takes time. I think if we are potentially competing for a section title, that means that we are one of those teams you saw in November and December is much different than what you saw come the end of January. Our potential to grow into a section champ is there. But there are a lot of things we got to take care of first to get there.